| | Make sure you read this commencement address... "Art delights, instructs, consoles. It educates our emotions. And it
remembers. As Robert Frost once said about poetry, "It is a way of
remembering that which it would impoverish us to forget." Art awakens,
enlarges, refines, and restores our humanity. You don't outgrow art.
The same work can mean something different at each stage of your life.
A good book changes as you change."
Last year I shared the Stanford Commencement Address because it was Steve Jobs. This year I share it because it's a must read. It's from an alumni that is a non celebrity. A man that tugs at my heart and brain and shares common thoughts about art and education. A man that speaks about the void in our culture. A man that is not a celebrity but works hard everyday to make the world a better place. Not whining about it and accusing or blaming a political party for it.
I hope that my children will be the first of my family to have the opportunity to go to college. To use their degrees to make a difference everyday in the lives of other people. To lead, learn and follow when needed to make all of our lives better, not just their own. I do not want them to learn how to complain and blame. I want them to awaken, enlarge, refine and restore our humanity. I want them to do...
A friend of mine put's 'Art saves lives' on her email footer. I may not
understand the deeper meaning behind that enough to agree with it, but I do agree that Art expands our
soul and knowledge. If we humans embrace art and encourage it and
promote it (in a non-snobbery way) we will embrace life and in turn
fight to save lives. And yes I put the word fight in there on purpose.
I will read this to my family at the dinner table tonight. I hope you find as much inspiration from this as I did. It's a great read.
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| | bandwidth (wireless) from AHS GYM - CEER 
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| | I can't climb rock walls... 
At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washiington, a climbing wall is part of the new Military Advanced Training Center. Sgt. First Class Jacque Keeslar practiced climbing the wall.
Photo: Haraz N. Ghanbari/Associated Press |
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| | Lots of splaining to do! I owe you lots of posting. Lots going on.
- Weekend with the guys at PAX. (Now posted)
- Michele was in the Hospital and we had the kids for a week. (check out her blog at Mitzelfamily.ProjectA.com )
- Teague had Volleyball tryouts and 2 weeks of 2 practices per day.
- Teague is in High School Now!
- Teague Makes the Team. JVII. I'm very proud of her.
- We go sailing with the McKelvies.
- We take out the JetSki's for the last hour of the last day of the summer and get pulled over within seconds of getting in the water.
- Exciting TV 20 News.
- Dena and I help out at the first football game as first time highschool parents.
- Teague gets selected by her teammates as Speaking Captain.
- We go camping with Horses at a new campground in ButteFalls.
Stay tuned for at least a paragraph on each of those soon. Sorry just been too busy.
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| PAX Weekend (8/24/07-8/26/07)- 3 men and a Babe
- Weekend warriors
- Sleepless in Seattle
- What the 'F'
A couple of years ago I went on my first guys weekend. It was a gift from my father in law, a Rogue River fishing trip, just the guys. I dreaded going. Everyone was flying in to our backyard. Yes the Rogue River is minutes away but I have never gone. I don't fish. I don't raft. I don't do man weekends. Needless to say, I had a fantastic time and it ended up being one of the most romantic trips I could think of. WTF? you ask, Jim's gone BrokeBack? nope, The river is full of romance. It's a constant adventure. I could think of no better place to spend with my wife. The two of us in the boat with a guide, fish jumping into the boat and amazing tranquility on the water. Spending the night in a treehouse, photographing nature and showering in a waterfall... anyways the weekend will go down as one where I wish I had Dena with me and that's a whole other story.
This story is about my recent weekend with the guys. Not romantic. Not a trip I wish Dena was on with me. (she would of hated it). This was a true guy weekend. We drove to Seattle (It took us 11 hours, yuck) and we even provided tech support on the way. We used hot spots at McDonalds to get online and correct issues clients were having. (That's the cool part of our business) and we were able to use our phones to check email all the way.
We even watched youtube videos on my iPhone about David Blaine parody and laughed outloud for hours at the "What the F?" line that was constantly used.
What were three middle aged men driving to seattle for you ask? PAX of course. Our first Penny Arcade Expo. From table top games to video games to console games and lan parties this was by far 3 days of total Geekdom. Total. When I went to comic con there were at least 50% female representation and most seemed to be in costume. This my friends was a total geekfest. 99% guys. and the women that attended were very comfortable being with the guys.
Last year's attendance was 10,000 people. This year was 30,000! It had outgrown the Bellevue convention center and relocated to the Washington Convention center in Seattle. We owned the place. One time (While walking back to our hotel or to a party, I forget) a Microsofty asked us how long this was going to last. I guess the Nerds don't like it when the Geeks come to town. I met people from all over the country. How did I know he was a Microsofty, The $100 hair cut, the $2000 outfit, the $6,000 watch, the $100,000 car and the hot (I mean HOT! babe on his arm) and he looked like he was 20, except for the bags under his eyes.
Highlights.
1. Keynote by Will Wheaton. I had seen him speak before at mac world. he charmed the audience with inside jokes and told stories as only he could about his childhood finding video games while his parents smoked pot and took him to auditions. He made us all laugh and all remember why we love gaming. we love to have fun. He beat up hillary clinton and some republicans too who are trying to condemn video games for violence. He reminded us that we are all humans, and that gaming bridges our worlds. Will is so fast at thinking and breaking away from his 'speech' that at one point when one hand went up about a question he had on a video he once stared in, he threw back, would you please return the only copy that exists on netflicks, he has been waiting for it for months. he was funny and intelligent and humble and a self proclaimed grumpy old man.
2. The Q&A with the founders and authors of Penny Arcade. (Equal parts comics and commentary, Penny Arcade features Tycho and Gabe, the alter egos of creators Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins.) They followed Will Wheaton on stage and again for an hour we laughed. These guys are brilliant. Funny, Awkward and intelligent. They connected with the audience in a way that I will never be able to explain. At one point Jerry Holkins (aka Gabe) sang a beautiful A Cappella ballad about Elves in World of Warcraft (I think) and everyone held up cell phones in tribute like a rock concert. It was geek heaven. The questions from the audience were also brilliant and many caught us off guard. We laughed though the whole thing. They were clearly humbled and taken aback by the sheer force of geek in the room.
3. The pirate girl from Comicon. She was there and talked to us and took pics with us and wrapped her legs around me and I giggled. God I am a nerd.
4. Spending time with the guys. Yes we travelled to walt disney world together, but this was different, no families, no responsibilities (except clients) and we had a blast. We shared one liners from movies, commercials and video games and made ourselves laugh at jokes that only nerds could laugh at. It felt good to just be a kid again. Picture 3 grown men sitting around an iphone in a fast food restaurant, laughing outloud at youtube videos. yup, priceless moments.
5. 3 days of around the clock fun. 5 levels of a convention center packed full of people just having fun.
6. The 'F' word. It flew out of every mouth (yes even ours - when in rome...) all throughout the convention. It lost all mean for accentuating and became just the word use used to fill time when speaking, like UH.
7. SuperBad the movie. We went to a rated R movie and laughed our guts out. This movie is so over the top and so crazy we couldn't stop talking about for days. In fact we still talk about it.
8. Seattle being overthrown by russian solider women. Hot russian/chinese soldier babes with machines guns. One party we went to was a theme party to announce a new game. the party layout was awesome, by the time you made it deep into the warehouse, you really felt like we were invaded and needed to fight back to win back our country. Only problem we had to buy our own drinks and there was NO food. we didn't stay long, just long enough to spend $25 on 3 drinks and watch some gameplay, which was worth it. The game (World in Conflict) will make me buy a $2,000 PC to play it, ok Spore will too.
9. GameBoy DS. We felt out of place (although Rick admitted to having 4 at home) as everyone, and I mean everyone, seemed to not only have a DS, but also play it across the network with everyone else. On bean bags, standing in line, riding the escalator, waiting for the keynote, everywhere and every spare moment. One cool thing was a music jam by a local developer (who's hard bodied side kick - obviously marketing gurl - told me that if I played the game, girls would dig me.) The game was a garageband type of game where you scratched the screen to make music and play along with a music score. it looked very fun and sounded awesome.
10. Prince of Persia Creative Director of Ubisoft Montreal, Patrice Desilts (Dude) demo of Assassin's Creed. This game is amazing and the presentation was awesome as well. He demoed how he developed with with 400 + people over 4 years. From early prototypes to the game that is about to release. The recreation of entire cities like Jerusalem and the world that connects them. You can climb walls, run, jump and kill like an assassin, not a kid learning how to be one. You can interact with everything in the game. The maps are over the top amazing and the visuals are sure to win awards for cinematography. I will buy this game and what ever hard ware is required to play it well. I still dream of it and of Jade Raymond, who he only showed once on screen. Dang it!
11. Red vs. Blue. From the inside jokes to amazing humor on the panel and the fan following and watching the videos. This was one I didn't know anything about. It made me laugh and see how much humor existed in our gaming community, these people are brilliant. I felt like I had laughed the entire weekend.
12. Frys shopping on the way up and on the way back.
13. Geek Conversations. I kid you not, these are real. You can't invent these, they are priceless.
A conversation between two teenagers as we sat waiting for a presentation to start.
"Dude, can you break your dick?"
"Sure you can, don't you know that?"
"I mean I guess so, walruses have bones in their penises, but I guess"
"Hello, why do you think they call it a 'bone... er - you can totally break it - I can't believe you don't know that"
"duuude..."
A conversation between 2 middle aged men (not any of us) in the bathroom at the urinals.
"I was a little disappointed in that dungeon master"
"why?"
"No way would orcs take women prisoners, they would just kill them"
"Not orcs from the K'ilonarchen tribe, they take women for pleasure"
"What for?"
"FOR PLEASURE!"
"Oh"
"Get it?"
"Yup, Pleasure...,(pause) hold one, my mom's calling..."
All in all, a great guys weekend. A weekend that reminded me why I like Paul and Rick so much. A weekend that reminded me that I love to play games, I just stopped because of life.
I fell in love with gaming again. From board games, table top, pc, console and those damn DS games. I have played games everyday since we got back and I can't wait until next year.
See my photos here.
See 'Official' photographs here.
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| | Apple did it again. 
All about iPods today.
600,000,000 copies of itunes installed
95,000,000 tv shows sold
"This last statistic blew my mind: in the US of all the music releases in 2006, 32% were digital-only releases. They weren't released on a CD. Live concerts, independents. Look how far we've come. A THIRD of the music released in this country was digital only."
1. iPod Shuffle - Same Price $79, now in colors.
2. iPod nano - Wider (Phat) and with Video and in colors.
3. iPod Classic - New Name and up to 160 GB hard drive. WOW!
4. iPod Touch - the iPhone without the Phone - Very cool!
5. iPhone - Now only in 8GB model and now only $399 effective immediately!(Ouch!)
6. iTunes wi-fi music store. Browse, Buy songs wirelessly.
7. Starbucks sense - Hear a song playing at starbucks and buy and download on your ipod touch or iphone.
I think Apple is being very aggressive and smart getting everyone to want the new upgrades for Christmas.
You can also buy ringtone songs with ringtone editor for an additional $.99 cents.
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